Luigi Mangione’s lawyers are pressing their double-jeopardy argument as they seek to have his New York murder charges dismissed. They say his federal guilty plea covered essentially the same conduct: stalking UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson with the intent to kill him, then killing him.
Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was shot in the back outside a Manhattan Hilton hotel. Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his killing.
Manhattan prosecutors have urged a judge to let the state case proceed. They argue that Mangione was not prosecuted for federal firearms offenses, so keeping the state charges would not amount to double jeopardy. They also contend that murder involves a different harm from the federal stalking charges, and that Mangione’s decision to abandon an “extreme emotional disturbance” defense under New York law does not show the federal case prevented him from using it.
In a reply made public over the weekend, Mangione’s lawyers—Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan—challenged those arguments.
They said the firearms charges still count as having been prosecuted, even though they were dismissed. The law’s definition of prosecution, they argued, does not require a guilty plea to each individual offense.
When Mangione pleaded guilty to the federal indictment, the lawyers wrote, the criminal case that had included charges of possessing and using a firearm was brought to an end for purposes of statutory double jeopardy.
The defense also argued that stalking Thompson with the intent to kill him was part of the same core conduct as the murder. New York’s double-jeopardy law is more restrictive than the federal constitutional standard, and prosecutors must show that the state charges address different harms from those covered by the federal case, the lawyers said.
They argued that the federal stalking law is intended to protect people from being murdered when someone stalks them with the intent to kill. While the federal charge includes elements such as interstate travel and electronic communications, the lawyers said those details are not the central harm the law is meant to prevent.
Mangione’s attorneys have asked Judge Gregory Carro to dismiss the state charges. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
